new virtual Birding Game
So the basic idea of the Birding Game is that you can go virtual birding, click on the bird silhouettes and be presented with a bird photo which you need to identify.
At the moment there are three locations:
Corpus Christi, Texas
Extremadura, Spain
Lake Neusiedl National Park, Austria
Little Owl hanging out in Extremadura, Spain
And you can choose to play at one of three levels:
Hiker (easier species, nice ID photos)
Birder (tougher species and/or tougher photos)
Top Birder (some toughies thrown in)
So far we have a good 11,000 photos to try reduce the chance that one gets repeat images and can just play the game from memory instead of through recognizing the species.
Now, thanks to Tom McKinney and Martin Garner, we now know that if you want to see birds you need to get your . off the chair and go look for them. This is for the people who are stuck in an office and would rather be guessing mystery birds and pretending to be in Spain than doing the monthly financials…
Great fun, Dala. And congratulations to you and the Swarowski team for this great game.
thanks Gunnar, we worked really hard on it. I took the panorama from Extremadura and it consists of at least 35 individual photos stitched together (two different locations to give a variety of habitats) – a huge amount of effort. I am sure you can imagine how long it takes to select, crop, arrange and sort 11000 bird photos. A great job done by the designers Florian and Alexander of Peschke Design.
There may be a bug the rightmost Flying Heron over the birder is not clickable in Mozilla.
You may want to check it.
Hi Gunnar, I have been playing it mainly in Mozilla and not had a problem. Sometimes the birdies seem to be faster than my ability to click them easily. Normally if you wait a bit, you can allow them time to disappear and reincarnate as a plover silhouette. Or an eagle/phoenix.
I’ll keep a check on it though and see if it reappears.
Hey Dale, Maybe do one for Peru? We have been thinking of doing something like this with the photodatabase of BirdingPeru.com, by why re-invent the wheel.
Maybe some cooperation?
Great game Dale!